It’s true that competition drives progress. We can see various sales teams in a sales department of an organisation vying for the position of the dream team that closes the most number of deals. We can see competition almost everywhere in the world, from the sports to the academics right down to the corporate workplace.

Because of this phenomenon, everybody wants to be the best.  Hence competition in every aspect of our lives heats up further. Companies create new departments to process sales orders in more detail and even search engines compete with one another by adding more features to provide the best email service to online users.  This is all well and good but in the process, complexity results. Work processes increase, things get sophisticated and our lives get more complex than ever.

It will be good simply to look at the learning process of students. An educational institution is often considered good when they produce quality academic papers to the academic professionals. And sometimes, the papers are written in such complex lingo that it’s hard for an individual to comprehend unless he or she is from the academic profession. I have seen and read many papers of such nature and at the end of the day, I realise that the gist of these papers can easily be summarised in a sentence or a paragraph and most of them can be simplified simply by changing the lingo and paraphrasing the various sentences.

It’s ironic why things are often made more complex when they can be simplified. Does the use of jargons and technical terms really increase one’s credibility? Even if this is so, wouldn’t simplifying the language so that the masses are able to understand the content be better? Won’t it be better if simplicity rules rather than complexity?

We can in fact learn many things from simple things. What is simple is actually at times complex and although this is so, we can easily learn from these simple elements. Take a look at water for example. Consider the following:

• Flexibility: Observe water in an ocean, lake and stream. Observe water moving in various terrains of different width and height. What do you observe? Water is adaptable to all terrains. If their path is obstructed, they overflow and find another way to travel. If the water moves from a lake into the ocean, it blends into the sea. When the water from the sea reaches dry ground, it splits into various channels and flow independent of one another. In a nutshell, water adapts and moves.

• Durability: Water will last forever because it has the ability to exist in different states. When the ocean dries up during a drought, water evaporates and exists as water vapours. And in the morning, they condense and form dew on the leaves once again. They are never destroyed and they never go away. Similar to energy, water’s durability runs high.

• Adaptability: When you have a fever, warm water can be used for treatment. When you are thirsty, cold water can be used to quench your thirst. When you want to whip up a nice dish for dinner, hot water can be used to boil a bowl of delicious soup. Water thus can be used in various ways and be accommodating to our needs.

• Tranquility: Unless driven by an external force such as during a flood, water is tranquil on the whole. That’s the reason why Japanese Zen architects love to have water around the buildings (other than the fact that it may be due to Feng Shui). This is also why most of us experience a sense of serenity when we sit down and look at lakes and the ocean, even if it’s just for a while. 

It can be observed that there are many qualities of water that we can learn from. Water is merely a simple element that most of us took for granted but if we were to take a closer look, it’s not difficult to see that there are many things that we can learn from it.

Similarly, when it comes to all aspects of our life, be it for learning or for work, simplicity is still best. In our bid to stay competitive and organised, we have discarded simplicity and have chosen complexity as the optimal tool to manage our lives.

 It’s time we give simplicity a chance to prove ourselves wrong.

Barry Schwartz’s presentation on the paradox of choice (July 2005) reinforces this perception.